Lydia Sokolova, one of the dancers on the stage that night, said
the audience came prepared.

"They had got themselves all ready. They didn't even let the
music be played for the overture. As soon as it was known that
the conductor was there, the uproar began," she said in an
interview recorded in 1965.

If you're not a classical music buff, consider this something to
put in your cocktail conversation arsenal. The Rite of Spring
wasn't just a ballet, it was a massive challenge to music as it
was.

At the turn of the century, the debate in music obviously wasn't
about rock vs. hip hop, it was a lot headier than that. The 1800s
was dominated by Romanticsm, flowing melodies and grandiose
symphonic compositions full of nationalistic sentiment and
emotion. Philosophers believed that music was the highest form of
art because it took no shape, and when you heard it, you just
felt without any connection to an object.

He wanted the music to be an object. To forget the melody and
create something with sound. That's why, if you've ever heard the
Rite, it sounds jagged and edgy.

To Stravinsky, when you performed the ballet, you were also
creating a thing, not just a feeling.

At that time, ballet was an art form the Russians had come to
dominate. Stravinksy and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky's
complicated that form as well. 'The Rite' had no plot in the
traditional sense, but was just a series of dances, and instead
of making dancers perfect and graceful, their movements were wild
and violent.

In short: Stravinsky's Rite of Spring isn't about some gentle
baby birds being born in their nests. Its the violent emergence
of life against the odds of nature.

To an audience steeped in the beauty of Romanticism this was
either daring and refreshing, or a show of Russian "primitivism" in
the most pejorative sense. That's why everyone went completely
wild.

Imagine that happening at the ballet now.

To see why this ballet isn't like The Nutcracker, check out the
video below: